Thursday, 19 May 2016

YouAreComic Presents: Hal-imony #1...

I've always had this inexplicable love for Green Lantern. A dude who fight bad guys with a shimmering, green, skyscraper-sized lemon zester made of his thoughts - provided of course they weren't coming at him with a yellow stick - what's not to like?

Over the years however my love for Hal Jordan has been somewhat diluted by the many, many other Emerald gladiators we've been introduced to along the way - Guy, John, Kyle, Killowog, Tomar, hell even G'nort! After a while you start to feel a bit disloyal to poor old Hal.

To put things right. I'm going to go back and re-read those classic GL tales from the beginning and put Hal back where he belongs! Starting here with Green Lantern v2 #1 John Broome and the always awesome Gil Kane!

So we we begin our first step on our long, emerald-hued journey face to face with a humongous, brown, alien monkey.

I know all the YouAreComic faithful are crying out just as I did:

WTF! Where's Hal versus the Giant Creepy Clown Puppet from the cover?

Sadly we'll have to wait until we get to the backup strip before we sample that little nugget of crazy. Instead we'll have to make do with our first look at everyone's favorite balding, blue, obnoxious little know-it-alls The Guardians Of The Universe.

Modern readers can be reassured that despite decades of continuity even back in the days of Ye Olde 1960 these are the same Guardians we know and tolerate. Right out of the gate in their first appearance they're pulling a dick move:

In fact Hal still doesn't even know the Guardians exist! When they want him to come to Oa and rehash his origin for the benefit of the folks at home they summon an 'energy duplicate' that will have no memory of them. There's a good use of advanced Oan technology - way to go guys!

Although maybe they have a point with their uncertainty about Hal being up to the job - dude does go flying off to fight a giant alien monkey on the say-so of his magic lamp.

So the thing with the giant telepathic alien monkey is really just just a framing device to facilitate a retelling of Hal's origin. Mr Broome does attempt to give it an interesting wrinkle - in that the big monkey's telepathy can mess with Hal's willpower thwarting his attempts to use his ring against it directly. Hal unwrinkles that BS in the space of a few panels though as he freezes the giant monkey then deposits it on the alien planet's North Pole. Job's a good 'un.

Enough of this monkey business we want to get to Hal versus Creepy Clown Puppet already!

This back-up strip is actually a lot more fun. This one's framed by Carol Ferris pining over GL wondering why he's taking so damn long to pop the question - his pesky insistence of saving the lives of those in mortal danger keeps getting in the way dammit! Uh huh, sister - that man ain't no damn good!

While Carol gets her mope on, GL is donating his time to a charity parade through Coast City (geez, that guys sure is a jerk huh Carol?) thinking about a recent robbery he foiled. Strangely the robber turned out to be not in control of his own faculties. Putting his awesome space-cop detective skills to use GL wonders if this robber might not be related to other 'puppet-like' robberies occurring in the city over the past few days. However before he gets the chance to smugly pat himself on the back for his ability to a.) read a newspaper and b.) spot a link between two clearly linked events....

...he's attacked by a big Creepy Clown Puppet! Yayyy!

Sadly this titanic struggle lasts all of three panels. Boo! However having his life threatened by a giant gun-toting puppet puts Hal in the mood for a night of dancing.

So cut ahead few hours and a few miles across town to a local Bluenote club where GL (in full costume no less!) is having a delightful time cutting the rug with the lovely Carol. Unfortunately Carol, as is her way, sees this as the right time to put the commitment thumbscrews to our hero. Thankfully he is abducted by the awesome puppeteering technology of the nefarious genius behind the whole 'puppet robbery' caper, the crook with the somewhat 'too-on-the-nose' moniker of Puppet-Master.

The Puppet Master's snazzy yellow jumpsuit would have made him a totally unbeatable opponent for the emerald gladiator if only he had kept a tidier lab! Hal uses a handy dandy length of rope that the messy megalomaniac left lying around to make a puppet of the puppeteer! Irony and justice is served. Boo-Yah!